


living in a lonely world

by QuoteMyFoot



Series: Naruto AU Week [1]
Category: Naruto, Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Familiars, Gen, Magic, Naruto AU Week, Talking Animals, Worldbuilding, original magic system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29289333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuoteMyFoot/pseuds/QuoteMyFoot
Summary: Anko is a witch, wandering the ruins of the old world with only her familiar, a snake called Mani, for company, until she stumbles across the mysterious village of Konohagakure. There, her magic skills will be put to the test by Ibiki as they try to fix a problem plaguing the village—but at least there's a chance she'll get a new friend out of it.Part 1: Day 1: Apocalypse.Part 2: Day 6: Fantasy.
Relationships: Ibiki Morino & Mitarashi Anko, Mitarashi Anko & Original Snake Character
Series: Naruto AU Week [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2151003
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: Naruto AU Week 2021





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on an original post-apoc fantasy setting & magic system. On the off chance anyone wants to play in this sandbox, that's totally fine **but you must CREDIT me and link back to this fic.** Also preferably drop a comment letting me know about it because that would be cool. Otherwise, enjoy! Part 2 hopefully to follow on Day 6 of Naruto AU Week for 'Fantasy'.

The forest was full of the delightful scents of spring. Anko whistled merrily as Mani’s tongue flickered in and out by her cheek, tasting the air. It was still a bit cold for their liking and Mani had looped himself around her neck several times to steal all her warmth, the wimp.

“Could we not find a clearing to sssun ourselves in for a while?” Mani asked plaintively.

“You know you aren’t actually a slave to your cold-blooded heritage any more, right? You could just magic yourself warm.”

“The sun is more pleasssant.” Mani’s head swung suddenly to the right, making Anko stop dead in her tracks. “There are more humansss that way… one approaches, I think… beyond that…”

Anko scratched her cheek. “I don’t suppose they smell friendly?”

“You know scents don’t work that way!” Mani snapped. His tongue flickered in and out again, and Anko felt the spike of crisp, fresh magic in the air. “I senssse magic. Strong magic.”

Anko’s stomach dropped to her feet. _No—_

“It is not him!” Mani said quickly. “I cannot tell if the magic scent is human or not. But it is not _his._ I would know him a mile away.”

She nodded, simply counting her breathing for several seconds. Right, of course it wasn’t him. They’d already be running. And why would he be here, in the middle of nowhere? More power to be discovered in the cities, he always said—

Mani’s snout butted her cheek. “I am sorry I causssed you fear,” he said.

“It’s not your fault.” Anko ran a finger gently over the scales on his head. “I just…”

“We cannot keep running scared forever.”

“I know.” Only she didn’t yet have the power to face Orochimaru, and some days she worried she would never have it. “But not now.”

Mani didn’t nod – he was above such human gestures – but she felt his acceptance, all the same. “What about this human then? I… I think they are ssstill coming this way. Their scent is strange.”

“Let’s meet them,” Anko decided. It was a bit risky—lots of people did not welcome witches—but she’d sensed the area was strong in magic, so it might be someone from whom she could represent something useful.

She waited in the forest for a few minutes. Mani reported that he couldn’t focus on the human scent any longer, but the first thing they saw was a fox. It darted, low and quick, between bushes at the foot of the trees within the fringes of Anko’s vision.

It was probably meant to be a scout, not to attract attention. But Anko’s magic sense, this close, were honed very fine indeed, even before Mani hissed a confirmation in her ear.

She let the fox take a few cautious sniffs, but when it looked like it was gathering energy for a spell, she turned to it directly and asked, “Where is your witch?”

The fox froze, its ears flattening against its skull.

“She was only casting a spell to detect other humans.”

Anko’s ears twitched, realising the voice came from behind her. Masculine; presumably, he was the fox’s witch. How the hell did he get behind her without her sensing him? She felt Mani’s scale glide smoothly across her skin as he oriented towards the new threat, tightening his coils from tension. But he gave no indication he had eyes on the witch.

“Oh yeah?” Anko said, taking care there was no edge to her voice. “Well, there’s no one else—just me and Mani.”

“You will understand, though, when I say I can’t take you at your word.”

She still couldn’t feel his presence—no, wait… there! A slight feeling… a disruption in the low ambient magic of the forest, not a real signature, but when she focused, she _thought_ it might be the rough size and shape one might expect from an adult man… _That would be a useful spell to learn!_

“Fine, fine,” Anko said. “Go ahead and do your checks, but I’m going to be on standby.”

“Understood.” The man’s tone was business-like, but cold—he was not trying to put her at ease or sound welcoming. Anko, of course, found this perversely comforting.

The fox’s spell was indeed a harmless little thing, gathering magic and then releasing it around itself; it passed through the trees but Anko felt it touch her own magic and then rebound back. Interesting! Did they pick it up from studying bats? It was unusual for most witches to have spells so outside the natural realm of their familiars.

“It seems you were telling the truth,” the man said.

His magic signature _appeared_ suddenly in the spot Anko had identified, making but her and Mani flinch. The space had felt empty before and now it simply wasn’t. Even after finding that spot, Anko was still surprised. What a disturbing… and _useful_ bit of magic.

Anko turned to face him and found herself still more surprised. His face was badly scarred, and now that his presence was unconcealed, she could tell that there was something— _abnormal_ about his magic… it was patched, almost, and inconsistent, as scarred as he was.

“Ibiki,” he said.

It took a moment for her to realise he was introducing himself. “Anko,” she replied, “and Mani.

Mani gave a quiet hiss.

“Gen,” said another voice—the fox, who had slunk up next to her whilst she wasn’t looking. “How did you see me? I was sure I was hidden.”

So the fox noticed something up about that, huh? “A lady must have her secrets,” Anko said loftily,” but I might be willing to share if there’s something in it for me.”

“Oh, she’s one of your kind, Ibiki.” Anko cackled when the foxed turned tail and started padding back through the forest, calling over her shoulder, “You can deal with her!”

“Thank you for the support, Gen,” Ibiki said. His sigh betrayed his sarcasm, although his inflection hadn’t changed all that much. He turned back to Anko. “What is your purpose in being in Konoha?”

“Konoha?” she asked. “Didn’t know this neck of the woods had a name.”

If Ibiki was surprised by this he didn’t show it. He simply raised an eyebrow. “It does. Do you seek to enter the village?”

“The village?” Anko supposed that must be where the magic was coming from. “Yeah. For a while, I guess. Not that I expect to be housed for free, I’m willing to be put to work… But yes, a little restock, get the lay of the land, refresh, et cetera…”

Mani gave a sharp hiss and Anko bit the inside of her cheek. _Old word,_ she knew Mani wanted to say. Another thing Orochimaru had taught her—he’d grown up before the Cataclysm, unlike Anko, and his dialect was peppered with words that had fallen totally out of use, no longer having any meaning. And, as a result, so was Anko’s at times.

Orochimaru wasn’t unique in that, of course; many elders still had clear memories of the Cataclysm and the time before. It wasn’t like all knowledge of the old world had died out yet. But Anko was too young to use those words without looking odd—and maybe, because she was alone, suspicious. In this shattered, uncertain world, it was hard to know who to trust, and sometimes only a small thing could be enough to mark you as dangerous.

She’d learnt that the hard way.

Ibiki did not comment on the use of the old dialect. “Our rule is no violence,” he said, “but if the village is attacked, you will help us so that we can help you. Mutual defence.”

“Makes sense.” The fact that he said that meant it had actually happened before, which was… not comforting. On the other hand, if they were a village that accepted witches, and had honed their magic through _conflict,_ maybe they would be useful people to know. “Agreed.”

Ibiki waited until Mani had hissed an agreement as well. Then he raised his arm and a blue light flashed briefly in his palm. All the hairs on Anko’s neck stood on end at once as there was an explosion of magic behind her. She instinctively flinched, but when nothing attacked, she whirled around.

Her jaw dropped.

She’d been standing right before the entrance and she hadn’t even noticed. The village wasn’t just some houses people had built in the forest. It was _part_ of the forest. The trees bent in shapes they never would’ve grown into naturally, hugging the settlement like many pairs of cupped hands, sheltering it. They made for a formidable wall in their own right, but Anko could see magic defences layered within them, reinforcing the sturdy tree trunks and leaving nasty magical traps for any would-be interloper—but the trees weren’t damaged by it. No, they were _fed_ by the magic themselves, stronger for it, with trunks as wide as two men abreast.

Anko had walked right past those trees and not noticed them. _Mani,_ whose sense she had only seen equalled by Orochimaru’s familiar, Manda, had not noticed them. An illusion, a camouflage, but so perfect and complete—it was better even than the trick Ibiki had pulled.

The only gap the wall of trees was a wooden gate, thick and reinforced still more with magic, already being slowly raised for her and Ibiki by a large ape and someone who might’ve been their witch.

“Come,” Ibiki said, smirking. Of course the first real emotion she saw out of him would be smugness. “There’s more to see than just the walls.”

They walked through the gate together. Anko heard the loud _thump_ of it shutting behind them. Normally the feeling of being trapped in somewhere she didn’t know, with _people_ she didn’t know, would have terrified her—but this… How could she be afraid of a place like this? It was too mesmerising.

Before the Cataclysm, it would’ve been too small to be of consideration. Anko had seen the ruins of that civilisation—towering buildings, now uncertain and growing more unstable by the day; endless metal and plastic devices, the Electronics, now unusable; signs and posters in languages and about cultures that Anko would never meet and which might not, any longer, exist. Orochimaru talked about those days with something approaching genuine regret. Real feeling. It was something he’d never had for Anko, so the world before the Cataclysm… there must have been something truly special about it.

What lay before her now was a collection of squat, stone buildings, tucked into the forested hillside, but it was so much _more_ than that. Magic emanated from every part of it, dazzling, even small touches of decoration like flowers encouraged to root in roofs, disused windowsills, to cover a door and always give off a pleasant scent.

The buildings weren’t just stone—she could see watchtowers and little huts had been formed out of the trees, probably in the same way they’d made the wall in the first place. Along the tree line at ground level, there were more shelters and homes made out of trees and branches and soil, sometimes stacked on top of one another quite clumsily but nonetheless tied together powerfully by magic.

“Impressed?” a familiar voice asked—Gen the fox, now calmly grooming herself by Anko’s feet. With all the other overwhelming magic signals, she hadn’t sensed her approach at all.

“How did you get in?” Mani demanded, probably annoyed to have been surprised as well.

“I am a creature of the forest!” Gen retorted indignantly, but Mani gave her a particularly scathing hiss, and she added, “And there are some safe paths through the trees if you know what you’re doing.”

Of course… perhaps a few animals here, like the large ape at the gate, couldn’t wander through the forest easily by themselves, but the others could hunt and forage on their own in the forest, providing for themselves and removing a not-insignificant burden from the village. It made sense for them to have their own ways of coming and going without having to open the gate for them each time.

“Hey, you didn’t answer me!” Gen said. “You are impressed, right? You have that stupid human look on your face.”

Ibiki cut in before Anko could reply. “Oh, I believe she’s _very_ impressed. I assume that someone with her sensitivity to magic can tell all the work that went into it.”

“You are bad at keeping secrets,” Mani told Anko.

“It could be worse,” Gen said, sympathetically. “My human is _too_ good at keeping secrets. He drives me mad.”

Mani snickered. “Humans can be so much trouble—”

“Shush you,” Anko said, bopping his nose. What was she supposed to have done when all that magic appeared behind her suddenly? Most attacks from a witch were less potent than that! “It… is incredible, though. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“The full name is Konohagakure.”

“Village hidden in the leaves.” Anko tilted her head to to observe the tops of the curved trees. “Apt.”

Orochimaru could keep his old world. _This_ was something else altogether.

“Hey, if I teach you some sensing stuff, could I learn that hiding spell you used?” she asked Ibiki.

“Perhaps.” He was back to smirking again, the smug bastard.

That wouldn’t do. “Yeah, it was a really great spell. I could _barely_ sense you at all.”

Ibiki’s smirk faded.

*

Gen was very put out to hear Anko’s special sensitivity to magic had been what found her out. “That is cheating. I cannot believe I was discovered by such a thing.”

The fox was definitely the more talkative one of this witch-familiar duo, because even though Ibiki was supposed to be escorting her through the village, he still hadn’t said all that much to her. Gen did much of the talking, and Anko found her grousing _hilarious._

Everyone seemed to know Ibiki, but not exactly to _like_ him—he got polite greetings from everyone who didn’t manage to give him a wide berth. It wasn’t because he was a witch; as well as the one at the gate, Anko had seen several more witches in the village. Maybe it was Anko’s presence, but she didn’t think so. Several children came up to ask Gen if they could pet her rusty red coat, glancing furtively at Ibiki as they approached, as though it was an act of great daring.

She filed that information away for later, since she wasn’t sure what to do with it.

As evening drew in, the splendour of the village became even more obvious. Anko could almost believe she was standing in a city of the old world as bright lights began shining from all kinds of surfaces, illuminating the village perfectly in the twilight. There were ordinary lanterns, but also magical bio-luminescence, strange, broad-headed mushrooms clinging to trees in places they would never normally have been able to grow.

And because the darkness did not totally set in, life continued on. People worked on weaves under great boughs of bioluminescent light, whilst others talked in groups out in the open, unafraid of anything that might lurk in the dark. Even the low buzz of constant magic in Anko’s ears seemed to her like what Orochimaru had described of the once-great city Tokyo—constant noise and light and _people_ everywhere, at all times of the day and night.

He’d always struck her as grumpy and sensitive. How had he stood to be around this all the time before the Cataclysm?

Anko had clung to his every word on the old world when she was younger. He spoke freely of its marvels, but even more freely of its weaknesses, things he would correct when he restored the old technology to its former glory…

But she’d come to realise that Orochimaru wasn’t really after ‘former’ anything. No, for all he talked of the power of the old world—connections and information at your fingertips, when anyone could learn _anything_ just with the touch of a button to access the ‘Internet’—it suited him quite well for the rest of the country to remain ignorant, whilst he gained power and followers through flaunting his use of forgotten scientific methods and… other experiments that no one else would dare…

“You’re distracted and I’m telling you about one of my great deeds!” Gen yipped, putting one of her paws on Anko’s foot. “Now, if you are tired, I will understand and we can find you a place to rest, but otherwise I expect you to pay attention!”

“She’s not a child, Gen,” Ibiki said. “She may not be quite as enthralled by your stories.”

“Well, then that is to her detriment…”

A place like this… with so much magic, it couldn’t have been built by just one person. It have to have been created with shared understanding, shared burdens…

Orochimaru would hate it. And if he knew about it, he’d try to destroy it.

“She’s staring off into space again!” Gen yelped. Anko blinked and the fox sniffed the air. “Oh, maybe you really are tired. I feel bad for yelling at you now.”

“No, that’s not it.” Anko sighed. “Sorry, I was just… thinking. It really is a great place you got here.”

Mani nudged her and his tongue flickered gently across her cheek. He knew what, or _who,_ she was thinking of.

“It seems like there’s a lot of people here though,” she said, trying to distract herself. “How do you grow food for them all?” There were small rice paddies built into the hill, but not nearly enough for the number of people she could see.

“We don’t,” Ibiki said. “Not here, anyway.”

“Ah. Outlying farms, then. I see.” _That would be your weak point if Orochimaru came here. He’d starve you out._ “Must be hard to protect, huh?”

He smiled. It was not a pleasant smile, cold and harsh like a northern winter, but it was refreshing in its honesty. “People have learnt that it’s a mistake to anger us.”

 _Like waking a sleeping dragon,_ Anko nearly said, but that was a really, _really_ inappropriate idiom for the post-Cataclysm world.

“We normally have more people patrolling them, anyway,” Gen said offhandedly, “but recently—” She stopped when she realised Ibiki was frowning at her. “What? That’s obviously why you brought the stranger in here. I know you better than _that._ ”

“Whaaat?” Anko asked, pretending to be offended. “You mean you didn’t just see me and instantly want to be my friend? I am shocked, I tell you! Shocked!”

Ibiki glowered at Gen, who must have had nerves of steel not to be affected by his terrifying gaze. Or maybe she was just a crazy bitch like Anko, that was also possible. “It is true,” he said carefully, “that outsiders are not _usually_ let into the village so quickly, but that’s the precise _reason_ why it might be wise to _keep that fact from them_ until we can ascertain their trustworthiness—”

Gen snorted. “You know I’m always right anyway, I don’t know why you’re so upset! But fine, we’ll go through the charade a little longer. Hey Anko are you secretly evil? Just checking.”

To Anko’s delight, Ibiki was so exasperated as to pinch the bridge of his nose. She cackled. “Oh no, my evil is not at all secret!”

“You see? This is pointless,” Gen told Ibiki. He sighed, and she relented. “Alright, fine, I know the other humans are stupid, I will wait to tell her, but really if they just listened to me a bit more often…”

Gen went on in this amusing vain for some time. Even Mani let out some of the repeating soft, short hisses that passed for laughter on a snake.

It was true that Anko hadn’t expected to be instantly trusted—she knew better than to _expect_ trust out of anyone, these days. Still… sometimes it made her sad. Perhaps it was because of the stories she’d grown up on under Orochimaru’s care, of the old world before the Cataclysm which sounded like a paradise of surplus food, communication and community compared to the small, isolated communities that warred for resources now. Konohagakure was the largest community she had seen outside of Orochimaru’s domains, and built so different, she—

She had just hoped for something different.

Orochimaru told stories of the dragons that had inadvertently brought magic back into the world, being one of the few humans to have met them. In the early days after the Cataclysm, when the entire world was in chaos, the dragons emerged to teach humanity how to make use of the magic that now permeated the world—by bonding with an animal, they would create a familiar, a conduit for the magic, so it could be bent and shaped to the human’s will. The select few who had been taught by the dragons, he said, were the chosen ones destined to unite the world once again, and restore humanity to their fallen glory of bygone days.

Anko believed the stuff about the dragons waking from their deep slumber and accidentally awakening the world’s magic, millennia after it had been forgotten by humanity. She even believed that one of the dragons had taught Orochimaru how to use magic.

She didn’t believe the dragons had _chosen_ anyone. Why would they, if people like Orochimaru were what humanity had to offer? Oh no, to Anko, it was far more likely that the dragons had simply retreated from the world again after seeing what their efforts had wrought. They’d accidentally destroyed entire civilisations only to find that all they’d done was to tear off the pleasant exterior and given power to the darkness that lay beneath.

Anko alone was proof enough of that—still, like an idiot, describing the whole thing in the kind of flowery, dramatic language that she’d learnt from Orochimaru. He loved talking about the inherent inner darkness of mankind and shit.

She hated it when Orochimaru was right.

That was why she always, deep down, hoped she’d be proved wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's part 2 for Day 6: Fantasy

The scale of the problem facing the village became obvious after Anko spent a few more days there – the biggest clue was the scent of clear mint in the air, but if she looked carefully, she could see the disturbances in the pattern of the magic in the air…

“You’ve got a miasma well,” Anko told Ibiki. She wasn’t sure if he was still hovering over her because he was supposed to watch her, or because he was in charge of this sort of thing, but she liked to think that either way he enjoyed her company.

Ibiki did not look surprised, only resigned, although the fox at his side snorted. “Maybe they will give you the men to go look for it now, Ibiki,” Gen said.

“What? You already suspected?” Anko pouted. “Well, anyway, you don’t need men to look for it when you’ve got me. I can find it easy enough.”

“That’s what I’d hoped,” Ibiki said. He had the same stoic look as usual, but his shoulder seemed a bit more square. “Can you tell a general direction from here? The problem has been getting worse over time, so we need to take care of it soon.”

“Uh… give me a sec. Mani? You good to go?”

“I’d prefer to have a big fat moussse first,” Mani groused, but he uncoiled himself from around her neck.

Anko tried to ignore the way the villagers stared and steered away from him. He was a mamushi—one of the most poisonous snakes there was in this land. Even if Mani wouldn’t bite them, they would have been warned away from snakes with his pattern their whole life.

Mani did not consider most humans to be worth his notice, so he paid them no mind as he wound himself around her arm. He didn’t have to signal Anko when he was ready; they’d been together so long that she just knew. His tongue flickered in and out, slowly tasting the air, and Anko timed her breathing to match his pace, until they were perfectly in sync.

It was not a sudden change. As their magic began to resonate with each other, Anko’s world expanded. Usually, if she squinted, magic was like dust motes in the air—faint, barely distinguishable. Now it began to take on colour, and she could see its movements clearly, like currents in the wind—many of the villagers had the distinctive terracotta colour of witches, like Ibiki… Anko could see her own colour, paler, more yellow… Mani was a golden colour like the gleam of his eyes, where the other familiars were brown…

Anko mentally shook herself, even as she focused on keeping her breathing steady. _Focus._

Normally, the magic that floated in the air would be a spectrum of colours—deep greens and browns for the earth; paler blue for rivers and streams; lakes and the sea were a deep, deep blue; and the magic of the air was wispy and grey.

The different magics would push up against each other, much like waves on a beach, ebbing and flowing as the potency of each rose and fell. The natural rhythm of the world.

The disruption was not obvious at first for its insidiousness. Then Anko realised what was wrong with the picture she was seeing—the natural ebb and flow was stiff and restricted by threads of gold woven into it, forming a barrier between the different kinds of magics, overtaking the natural harmony…

But where did the threads lead? It was difficult to see for how intimately they’d woven into the environment, but when she drew back a little, she could see the origin point—like a lightning strike, the solid, central pillar which each thread branched out of. And the strike came from… the mountains the village was built into. The north.

Anko gasped, breaking the spell. Her head span as the colours slowly drained out of her vision, leaving her blinking spots out of her eyes and squinting at the muted landscape.

Ibiki watched her with mild interest. “What did you find out?”

“To the north,” she mumbled. “Giiiive me a sec here…”

She sank to the ground, resting her elbows on her knees and cradling her head. The afterglow could be a real bitch to deal with. Orochimaru once told her that, before the Cataclysm, they used to make medicine specifically to deal with headaches, tiny pills that were easy to swallow. What she wouldn’t give…

Wait. The north. The _mountains._

A sudden, stabbing pain ran through her chest, and she didn’t think it was the aftermath of the spell.

“Does your water supply come from those mountains?” Anko asked. Her stomach had turned heavy.

“Yes…” Ibiki frowned at her. “Is this something we should be concerned about? Can a miasma well affect water?”

“It’s pure magic,” she drawled. “What _can’t_ it do?”

Mani hissed in her ear, which she thought was a very rude response to her perfectly eliding the issue of how she knew about issues introduced by interaction with pure magic. Orochimaru had been… knowledgable on that front, and many others. He wanted to know _everything._ It wasn’t all bad knowledge, but the things he’d done to obtain it—

It frightened Anko to think of how many facts Orochimaru had introduced her to as simply ‘knowledge’, and how naive she’d been to never think of _how_ he came by that knowledge. Not until it was too late.

“Are you ready to investigate now, or do you need more time?” Ibiki asked.

Anko looked up, blinking. “Just the four of us?”

Gen snorted. “Bold of you to assume I am coming.” Ibiki frowned at her, so she relented and added, “ _Fine,_ I’ll come.”

“Seriously,” Anko said, aware ‘serious’ was out of character for her, “is four going to be enough.”

“We’re just going to investigate.”

He was totally stonewalling her. She might have bought it with his stoicism, but Gen grooming herself was just a bit _too_ much feigned ‘business as usual’. Whatever. He probably had good reason, and she could bug him into telling her later anyway.

She stood up. “Fine, then, we can leave now since I’ve have a minute to catch my breath. You sure you’re not nervous about wandering the countryside with just a stranger? Who knows, I could attack you if I wanted.”

“I could take you,” Ibiki said.

Well that was just rude.

*

They left the village and headed vaguely north, Anko’s and Mani’s sense giving more specific directions as they got closer. It must be a deep miasma well; if Ibiki had left her along long enough the other day, she would’ve almost certainly found it herself.

It was kind of concerning that Konohagakure had only _recently_ noticed it. When she asked Ibiki about that, he simply shrugged.

Anko frowned. “Okay, this is getting ridiculous. If you want my help, you gotta be honest with me when I ask you relevant questions.”

“There’s not much to say,” Ibiki replied.

“Ibiki thinks they’ll have to move the village and no one else wants to hear that.”

He frowned at Gen.

“What?” she asked, casually licking her paw and rubbing her ear with it. “You were going to tell her eventually anyway.”

Ibiki sighed and ignored her, saying to Anko, “The rest, I will keep to myself for now.” He held up a hand to stall her immediate protest. “I want to see if you reach the same conclusions as me without prejudicing your answers.”

 _Double blind case study._ The phrase suddenly popped into her head—something from the science of Orochimaru’s pre-Cataclysm. It didn’t really apply to this situation, but the principle was close enough that she just said, “Alright then.”

The miasma well was one of the deepest Anko had ever seen. It wasn’t event just a ‘well’, really—which Orochimaru said were eruptions of pure magic from beneath the Earth’s crust, like volcanoes—but a network of faults in the land, all originating from one central point. Less earthquake, more river and tributaries. The well went deep into the mountainside, golden magic spilling out of it in all directions… but a lot of it headed towards the village.

“Well,” Anko said. “Good news. I don’t think it’s affected your water supply yet.”

“Is there bad news?” Ibiki asked, dry and sharp.

Instead of answering, Anko kicked the dirt. The truth was that she didn’t know. This was a bit out of her league. _Orochimaru_ would probably know. Wasn’t that depressing? She ran away from it all, only to be stuck, wishing she knew more of how to help, making all her rebellion pointless.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she confessed. Even standing a safe distance away – or what she hoped was a safe distance – she could clearly see the light erupting from the well, and the whole mountainside was made alternately hot and cold by the ambient magic pouring out. How had they not seen this down there? Her sensing, and Mani’s, might be greater than normal, but the animals in the surrounding area would’ve moved away from the magic instinctively, and surely the village had noticed _that—_ hell, go not too far out from the village at night, and at this size, you’d just _see_ it…

…At _this_ size.

“Ibiki…” Anko’s instincts were normally good, but she also had good instincts for _bad news,_ so she was crossing her fingers for this one to be wrong. “Has this magic well been… _growing?_ ”

“I wondered if you would suggest that,” he said.

“Just tell her _yes,_ Ibiki, honestly!” Gen huffed and put a paw on Anko’s boot. “We think it started out smaller and it’s been growing so slowly that no one realised it was there until it was… well, unmissable.”

Anko hated being right all the time.

“It is a frightening size,” Mani said quietly. She stroked his head – he was even more sensitive to magic than she was, so the atmosphere must be getting to him. “I see why your people do not want to move the village, but even so, against this…” He froze, suddenly, and then uncoiled himself from Anko’s neck in a blur of motion. “Anko, wait, come trace the energies with me.”

Ibiki looked alarmed when she put Mani down and he slithered off into the undergrowth. “Wait—”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” Anko said. Pure magic did not affect them as badly as most, thanks to Orochimaru’s… efforts. “We’ll be right back!”

She jogged away, hearing Gen hiss, “Stupid human! And snake!” after her.

_Aw, it’s so nice to be wanted._

Mani could look after himself, so Anko headed in a different direction, finding a thick tributary of magic and following it. She stared down at her feet and concentrated, and an echo of the magic swam into view before her.

For pure magic, it had a weird texture. Before being moulded and shaped by humans or animals, magic was… smooth, but tumultuous. It would shift, parts of it seeming to coagulate and pull more magic towards themselves before losing all form and returning to the natural flow of magic. Before Anko had been able to see it, Orochimaru had described it to her by putting dye in a river to show her the current. Magic was rather like water in that sense—it had a _flow._

This magic… it seemed to flow until close examination, but now Anko realised that it was not pure magic at all; there were… obstacles, _lumps_ , in it, which had the shape and feel of river magic, earth magic, air magic even _sea_ magic and the pure magic from the well was struggling to flow past them—

Past them.

Anko was going uphill, going against the flow of magic to find its source. She thought. But this magic was not flowing from the miasma well into the surrounding environment, as it should. Magic from the surrounding environment was flowing _into_ the well.

She abruptly pivoted on her feet and started retracing her steps, walking and then running to keep up with the pace of her own thoughts. _It’s not a miasma well at all. It’s a…_ Anko didn’t have a name for it yet because it had never happened before. Despite everything, she couldn’t help but think how gleeful Orochimaru would’ve been to see it.

The steady thumping of her feet as she ran was interrupted when she came to the top of a steep slope. She flailed her arms wildly, trying to regain her balance, but it was too late. _Oh shit—_

Anko brought a cocoon of protective magic around her, borrowing from the tough shell of a tortoise, as she tumbled down the hill, over rocks and roots and stray, mossy bricks…

When she eventually came to a stop, she was still bruised and battered but not bleeding anywhere. So that was a good start. Anko lay flat on her back and stared up at the night sky, trying to regain her breath.

It wasn’t a well, it was just a collection of magic… bits and pieces of other types of magic which had somehow… attracted the pure magic in the atmosphere, concentrated on one spot… but why?

Anko sat up and stared down the hill into darkness. She couldn’t see it, but she was sure the village of Konohagakure was there under its protective spell. Slowly, Anko stood up. She was still high up on the mountainside, seeing the landscape laid out before her. She couldn’t _sense_ or see anything, but the farms and orchards that fed the village must be out there too, scattered amongst the forests and clearings.

These mountains… they’d be right in the centre of that network.

It wasn’t a miasma well. It was _overspill._

*

It took Anko a while to find her way back to the others.

“Where have you been?” Mani hissed, climbing up her leg as soon as he saw her. “And why do you smell like one of the slow ones? What did you do?”

“I’m fine!” she said. “That’s not important right now.”

Mani stopped testing her limbs with his tongue. “You sense it too?”

“Oh, you did? Good,” Gen said. “Your familiar would not tell us because he was too worried about you, so maybe now we can understand what’s going on.”

“I was not!” Mani replied. “My human can take care of herself.”

And then he used an echolocation spell to test for broken bones. Anko rolled her eyes. _Sure, you big dumb scaly baby, you weren’t worried at all._

“I think I know why, as well,” she said, giving Mani pause. “Good news—I guess—is that there would be no point in moving your village.”

“No _point?_ ” Ibiki asked.

“It’s not a miasma well.” Anko explained what she’d discovered, the bits of spells that had gathered on the mountain, and how she thought they probably came from the village itself and its holdings. Judging by Ibiki’s furrowed brow, her attempts to describe the feel of the magic had not been as clear as Orochimaru’s explanation.

“Wait… but then…” Gen seemed lost for words. “If the village is causing it… even if we moved the village it would just happen again… what can we do? It can’t be fixed.”

“There is a solution to everything,” Ibiki snapped, his mouth set in a grim line. “Now we know what is wrong, we have the first step towards one.”

Anko hesitated at his obvious determination. For all his stoicism, the village must be really important to him. “There may not _be_ a solution,” she said carefully. “Some things… just are.”

It was so like fate, wasn’t it? A one of a kind magic settlement, built out of cooperation and stronger for it, and… and it was doomed. It was destroying itself without even meaning to—just by existing. What a perfect metaphor. What a perfect metaphor for everything that was wrong about this stupid, hopeless, ruined world—

And stupid Anko, getting her hopes up. Stupid naive little Anko, hoping for a best no one could deliver. She was so, so _tired_ of… everything. What was the point of trying to stop Orochimaru, of anything, if it was always going to turn out wrong?

She sighed. “Well, whatever. It’s your choice. I helped you find the problem, so I’d like to be gone tomorrow.”

“Anko!” Mani hissed.

Ibiki snorted. “So you wish to give up. I hoped you’d show his imagination, but very well. Teach me your sensing magic first and then you can go. I will exchange for the camouflage—”

“‘ _His’?”_

Anko’s voice came out as a faint whisper. She hadn’t meant it to, but it suddenly suddenly seemed like her inside had sunk into the ground, and she’d lost the ability to move as well as to breathe.

“You…” Mani raised his head high from her shoulder, swaying and hissing. “You _knew…_ Orochimaru?”

Ibiki smiled, cold and joyless. “‘Knew’ is a strong word,” he said, and he removed the bandana covering his head.

Anko flinched. His bald head was mottled and covered in pits, layered with burns; some of them shimmered in strange colours when they caught the starlight. She had no memory of Ibiki, but this—this she remembered, men and women, boys and girls, all subject to Orochimaru’s experiments. He despised humanity’s reliance on familiars, had been ever searching for a way that they could cast spells without a conduit… His early experiments had focused on the brain, trying to implant magic _into_ it as a source for spells. All of the experiments had failed.

Sometimes, when Anko was feeling particularly lonely, it brought her a strange sense of comfort to know that he hadn’t done any experiments on _her_ until he was mostly sure they wouldn’t kill her. Mostly sure.

Ibiki’s magic itself had seemed scarred.

“I thought no one survived,” she said.

“Almost no one,” Ibiki said. He replaced the bandana. Gen had shuffled closer to his feet and was uncharacteristically silent. “He altered you in some way as well, didn’t he? It’s why your senses are so acute.”

Anko’s mouth was dry. “So you knew I used to be his pupil the whole time. Is that why you let me in? Because you thought I was like _him?_ ”

“Because I believed you would understand,” he said. “Orochimaru is the reason a place like Konohagakure must continue to exist. It cannot be allowed to fail.”

What a strange, bright mirror to her own thoughts. How she’d found the village to be… Orochimaru’s antithesis, almost. “They don’t even like you.”

“Irrelevant,” Ibiki said, dismissive. “They don’t have to like me for me to do my job—which is to protect the village.”

He really meant it, Anko realised. He’d seen what Orochimaru was capable of and he thought—his only thought was that something must exist to oppose him. Unlike Anko, who had spent this whole time running away, like a coward.

“Fine,” she croaked. She cleared her throat and repeated herself, stronger: “Fine.”

“You will teach me the sensing spell?”

“No, you idiot!” Anko snarled. “I’m saying I’ll _help you._ ”

Ibiki blinked.

Then he smiled, genuine and warm—and still terrifying, naturally, but there was a lump in Anko’s throat anyway. Being needed by someone was… nice.

She could only hope she wouldn’t be disappointed again.

*

Teaching Ibiki and Gen the sensing spell was still the first step. They did not have the passive senses of Anko and Mani, so in order to be useful at all, they had to cast the spell to see what was going on with the magic currents.

Then there was the arguing. So much arguing. Ibiki would suggest solutions only for Anko to have to shoot them down, saying magic didn’t work that way. Or that way or—

Eventually, she simply had to teach him what she’d learnt from Orochimaru’s scientific approach. By then Ibiki had recruited a few others from the village—just a few, or Anko wouldn’t have been comfortable sharing the information at all.

The young man with a scar across the bridge of his nose was called Iruka. It took her a while to realise he was just perpetually anxious and not solely terrified of Ibiki, but he showed Mani nothing but courteous respect from day one, and so he earned Anko’s respect too. The other was a middle-aged man who seemed gruff, serious, and generally unfun until Ibiki made a polite inquiry about the health of his family, and they were all subjected to a ten minute speech about why Ino was the most beautiful, smartest and most well-behaved little girl to ever exist.

 _Ah, so unlike Ibiki, he has a genuine soft spot._ And was invested in the village’s welfare to provide his girl a safe place to grow up, which had probably been the point Ibiki _wanted_ her to take on board, but Anko instead preferred to use this knowledge to launch Inoichi into speeches directed at Gen, who had apparently had her tail pulled by Ino, aged six months, and had disliked the child ever since, because Gen was a perfectly reasonable animal like that.

But it was a week before they were all on the same page, and in that time, the miasma sink—Anko finally named it—continued to grow.

“It’s like it’s dammed up,” Inoichi muttered to himself. “If this keeps up, it could burst.”

This was a possibility Anko had not considered, so that was nice. A little extra terror and existential dread to help speed things along, no big deal.

Luckily for Konohagakura, Anko excelled under time pressure.

*

“Are you sure this will work?” Iruka asked.

“No and if it fails we’ll probably all die horribly,” Anko replied. “Well, you guys will die, I’ll just _wish_ I was dead.”

Inoichi started laughing.

“Oh, okay,” Iruka said. He squared his shoulders. “I guess we better do it right, then.”

So pure and precious!

“Stop being annoying on purpose,” Ibiki said. “It will work. If you’re as good as you claim.”

Not pure. Completely un-precious. She stuck her tongue out at him, but he was right; it was time to get serious. Anko took a deep breath and linked her breathing with Mani’s.

The ‘blocks’ around the pure magic became even more obvious this way, although this spell was the only method the others had of seeing them at all. The magic was almost thick and gloopy, like tree sap, making Anko wrinkle her nose.

Her and Mani’s magic touched a part of earth magic and felt the echo of an old spell— _very_ old, she thought, because the echo spoke to her of changing shape, bending but holding, protective. It must’ve been what was used to shape the trees around the village.

This was just a remnant, some energy of the spell which had not been used and had fallen away only half-formed… until more and more unfinished spells and spell remnants fell into the landscape, where the whispers in them drew them all together at this central spot.

One way to remove the remnant would be to complete it, but Anko would have to find a poor innocent branch to twist for that. Anyway, it was actually easier and less likely to create more remnants if she unravelled it. Where the spell whispered to trees to bend without breaking, Anko offered the thought of growing straight and tall; where the echo gave the thought of holding, protective, she whispered of dominating, lonely trees, suffocating saplings in blackness.

Neither image was right, but under the opposing imagery, the spell could not hold form. As Anko and Mani relaxed and withdrew their interference, it disintegrated and was gone like ashes on the wind.

Anko resisted the urge to sigh, as it would disrupt the spell. _One down… too many to go._

*

It was the work of several days and nights to clear the whole mountain. That didn’t completely remove the magic sink, but Anko was sure that, without the spell leftovers serving as anchors, it would eventually dissipate. But hey, she’d been wrong before!

Iruka gave her a quiet and solemn thank you when they were all done. He was an adult of similar age to her but she kind of wanted to pat him on the head for that. Inoichi clapped her on the back, which was a more normal response.

Ibiki did nothing like that, of course, because that could be construed as having _feelings,_ but he did ask, “So, will you stay?” and the other two blinked like such a possibility had not occurred to them, and this was why Anko liked him best.

She grinned and elbowed Ibiki in the ribs. “Are you sure you could stand to have me around?”

“I have withstood torture before,” Ibiki said, with an utterly straight face. Anko cackled. “Besides which, you were useful. I could always stand to have more help defending the village.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Gen muttered.

“No, just unhelpful.”

Gen’s fur bristled and she bit his ankle, though not hard enough to draw blood.

Anko had been wandering, searching for some kind of spell or power that would be an answer to Orochimaru, for so long that the thought of settling down in one place seemed pretty weird. Weird, but not unwelcome. It was time to accept that she was never going to beat Orochimaru at his own game—he was too clever and ruthless. The best way to win was not to play his game at all.

That didn’t mean she could throw away everything that she was. For better or worse, he’d made her who she was.

But she thought Ibiki would understand that. “Yes,” she said, “I’ll stay.”

Mani’s approving hiss, Gen making happy huffing noises whilst trying to trip her up, and the second genuine smile she’d seen from Ibiki let her know it was the right decision.

**Author's Note:**

> All kinds of comments loved and appreciated; concrit, I didn't like x, this reminded me of y, z was very cool--any thoughts are welcome and valuable.


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